


Ember of Hope

by sleapyGazelle



Series: Pipedreams and Priorities [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Badass Pidge, Gen, POV Pidge | Katie Holt, The first story in what will hopefully be a trilogy, Zombie Apocalypse, Zombies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-05-16 12:04:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14811020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleapyGazelle/pseuds/sleapyGazelle
Summary: On a quest to find her family, Pidge escapes an Earth plagued by zombies. But when she discovers the virus isn't contained to one planet, her mission gets a whole lot harder. As the stars would have it, the people she meets along the way become part of her journey, some more trustworthy than others.





	1. A Nagging Itch

**Author's Note:**

> This is where Pidge's journey begins. Takes place before the events of "When The Sun Sets" (Part 3 of this series), but both can be read as stand alones. Prequel to "Absolute Zero."

“Stay close to me, Katie.” Colleen takes small steps as she moves forward with the queue gathered to get food. 

“I’m right here, mom,” Pidge replies, in what she hopes is a reassuring voice. 

A supply run was completed earlier in the day, and the cooks in the survivor’s community are finally done preparing food for everyone. Pidge and Colleen go up to the server to get their portion. Tim, one of the cooks, watches as they check off their names on the tablet and then gives them each a piece of meat and a slice of bread.

“Is this all?” Pidge blurts before she can stop herself.

Tim looks at her askance. “Everyone gets an equal share in what the runners pick up; you know that. You want more? Go up to the surface and help get more supplies.” 

“That’s enough of that,” Colleen snaps, balancing her plate in one hand and pulling Pidge away with the other. They make their way back to their own living area, sitting cross-legged on the ground to eat. 

“He’s right, though,” Pidge says tentatively. “Dad and Matt always felt we had to earn our place at the camp.” 

“And look where their sense of community got them.” Colleen bites her lip, and gives Pidge a sad look that is becoming part of her permanent expression. “I can’t bare to lose anyone else, Katie. I don’t _have_ anymore family left to lose after you.” She finishes her last bite, sets her plate aside, and takes both of Pidge’s hands in her own. “So please. Stay below ground, and let me have this last peace of mind.”

Pidge nods, dropping the subject and not voicing the glaring question in her mind. _For how long?_

How long could the two of them go on like this? Living in fear, at the mercy of others, not knowing what happened to the rest of their family?

Sam and Matt Holt used to be regulars with the supply runners, until one day, the group came back without them. Colleen Holt, in all her five-foot-two glory, stood before the runners who did return, impressively masking her quivering lip as she demanded answers. The others merely bowed their heads and apologized. Apparently, a group of biters charged them, too many to stand and fight. The Holts fell behind, and going back would’ve been suicide for everyone else. 

Colleen let the runners walk past her, watching them sort through the food they’d brought. 

Meanwhile, Pidge nearly got into a fight over how they could leave their supposed friends to be eaten alive. Colleen pulled Pidge away by the hand, and the matter was never discussed again. 

But they are different after that, the remaining Holts. They keep to themselves now. 

Pidge has a feeling, either a nagging itch or an ember of hope, that the Holt spirit of survival can’t be so easy to crush. Matt and their father are alive. She just knows it. And no one is looking for them. 

Frustration wells up inside her at every mealtime. She's trapped in this underground bunker while half her family is out who knows where, eating who knows what, nursing who knows how many injuries. If there was any way to use the tech they have to get information, she could find them. But everything above ground is offline. 

The days wear on, and Pidge gets lonelier and lonelier. She retreats into her own mind, where a half-baked but passion-filled plan brews. 

One night, she packs a bag with bare essentials and food stolen from the guy who used to bully her before she finally punched him in the gut one time. She takes one of the blasters that the runners use when they go up, settling on the one that feels most comfortable in her hand. And she sets off, with a plan that extends no further than the last place her family was seen alive.

* * *

Pidge hasn’t written many letters in her fifteen years, but this is by far the most emotional. Tucking it under her mother’s pillow, she slings her bag across her back and creeps away from the commune. The bunker connects to the sewer system, and after a couple of dead ends, she finds a tunnel that looks promising. If her best guess is any good, it leads off in the direction of the shopping complex where the neighborhood’s main grocery store is. Or _used to_ be. It's abandoned and overrun now. 

The supply run that changed her life happened back when the stores were still relatively safe. That obviously changed that day, but it's still her only lead. She doesn’t know what, if anything, she will find there, or how she will survive a horde of zombies if they spot her. 

But she knows there's no one up there burying or otherwise disposing of bodies; the remains of unfortunate souls who become zombie food either rot in the streets, or if there's enough of them left, turn into walkers themselves. So, at the very least, if she keeps her eyes peeled, she can find some closure. She tastes bile at the mere thought of that worst possibility.

Her sneakers squeak as she walks on the narrow ledge along the side of the sewer. A ghost city as it is, the sewers run far drier than they once used to. The only water now is runoff from the rains, and frequently runs red-brown with blood. She's thankful for the darkness in the tunnel, if only because it means she doesn’t have to see that awful color as she walks. But nothing stops the wet smell of mold and decay from piercing her senses. When the odor begins to fade, she has no way of knowing whether there is actually less blood in this direction, or if she's just getting used to the smell. 

Just one more thing to get used to, besides the constant hunger and chill. And just as her eyes start getting used to the dark, she comes upon an offshoot of the tunnel. She peers around the bend and squints at a ray of light shining down. She gazes up ahead for the source.

A manhole cover. With moonlight shining down through the edges. There's a keypad to open the manhole, but hacking it is insultingly simple. The cover _fwooshes_ open and the moonlight pours in. She balances carefully on the ladder and lifts herself another inch as quietly as she can to look outside. 

She recognizes the neighborhood despite the sight of pale gray walkers wandering aimlessly over the streets. A soft groan sounds directly above her, and she freezes, hand itching to reach for her blaster. She doesn’t even know to to use the damn thing properly.

The walker above pauses in its endless journey, drawn to the gap in the ground or to her scent, she doesn’t know. She holds her breath, thinking fast. She can’t just drop out of sight; the sudden movement would lead the thing right to her. But if she does nothing, she’ll be discovered anyway. So she's stuck, staring. 

Emaciated, graying skin hangs from its brittle, long-dead bones. A gash in its side leaks withered entrails. One of its feet is twisted inward and drags with every mindless step the biter takes. Then it lowers its head. 

And suddenly, she finds herself staring right into the eyes of her nightmares. And they're staring back.

In a panic, she ducks back inside and shoots the keypad. The manhole cover swipes shut, this time permanently, at least as far as her own strength is concerned. Despite being the one to set it off, she is startled by the sudden blast of light from her weapon, nearly letting go of the ladder with the one hand she's now using to hold on. 

“Destroyed the only opening to the outside for a mile did ya? Nice job.”

Pidge lets go of the ladder and hops down, whirling around in the direction the scratchy voice came from. An old man sits on the ground deeper in the tunnel, watching her with his back against the wall. His wispy white hair and nearly translucent skin make him look like a wizard of some kind.

“Who are you?” she asks.

“Torin,” he barks. “And don’t bother telling me your name. I’ve got better things to remember. 

As she scrutinizes him in the dark, he reaches into the pocket of his ragged jacket, pulls out a half-eaten carrot, and proceeds to gnaw on it. 

Pidge tucks the blaster into her pocket but keeps a hand on it as she approaches him cautiously. “It’s nice to meet another survivor, Torin,” she says, wondering if he might have any information of value, and whether he’d be up to sharing. 

He peers at her and responds with a grunt. “I’m gonna have to walk another mile now whenever I need to go outside. 

“I panicked,” she admits. “It saw me and was coming for me, and…. I’m sorry about that.”

He merely grunts again, squinting at his carrot to see how much is left and pocketing it. 

Pidge gulps, squares her shoulders, and sits down next to him. “I’m looking for my family,” she shares, not very hopeful but unwilling to miss a chance, however slim. If Matt and her dad came through here, Torin might’ve seen them. She isn’t used to talking about it, but she forces herself to go on. “The others say they’re dead, but I have to try, you know?”

“Everyone has a pipedream,” Torin comments, closing his eyes and resting his head back against the filthy wall. “Careful wandering around here though, kid. There’s creeps about that go around snatching anyone unfortunate enough not to get bitten yet.”

“Oh?” She leans toward him, her interest piqued, then coughs as she catches a whiff of him. “You’ve seen them?” she presses, now safely out of his personal space again. 

“They haven’t seen me; that’s what matters.”

For a moment it seems like he's done talking, and Pidge starts racking her brain for ways to continue the conversation, but that proves unnecessary. He goes on,

“Or they have no use for me is more like it. Word is they run a labor camp.”

 _“Where?”_ she exclaims.

“Somewhere not in this hell, I guess. If it’s even true. But the nabbing’s true. Watched 'em take a couple of guys just a few weeks ago.”

“Did you get a look at who they took?” she asks, forcing her voice to remain steady. 

“As long as they don’t take me,” he shrugs, “I mind my own business.” He turns his head to look at her, and his sharp brown eyes pierce hers even in the darkness. “That boy they took had loud hair like yours,” he says flatly. 

Pidge’s breath catches in her throat. “Which way did they-- Where can I find them?” she demands.

To her dismay, Torin starts to laugh. It's a grating sound, raspy with disuse. Pidge winces.

“You didn’t hear me just now? You wanna run _away_ from them, kid. One look at their faces and you’d know. Gettin’ bit’d be a better fate.” 

Pidge hisses and draws out her blaster. “How’s getting shot in a sewer for a fate? Tell me where they took my brother!”

Fear flashes in his eyes for a split second before vanishing. He glares at her with a mix of anger and pity before pointing toward a bend in the tunnel ahead. 

“What else do you know besides a general direction?” she asks, blaster pointed unwaveringly at him.

“That you’re going to get yourself killed,” he snaps. “And that’s the best case scenario.”

She sighs. “Look.” She lowers her hands and keeeps her eyes on him as she reaches into her bag. “You’ve just given me hope that my family might still be alive. Alive and _in trouble_. Now, more than ever, I need to find them. Here,” she hands him a handful of the food rations she packed for the journey. “Because I shut your opening to the surface,” she explains.

Torin takes it from her with a pale arthritic hand. 

“Now, if there’s anything else you know, please….”

His voice is soft and incredibly sad when he speaks again. “They said something about the abandoned old shipyard.” 

“Shipyard?”

“You know, in the old space program, from before everything went to shit.”

“So this labor camp is…”

“Somewhere not overrun with biters, I expect,” he huffs. 

Pidge nods. If these people want to rebuild on some other planet, it would take a lot of work to make it anywhere close to habitable. And if they wield any sort of power in this apocalypse, unless they're saints, it makes complete sense that they’d misuse it. “Thank you, Torin. Seriously, thank you so much.”

“You won't thank me when you’re dead,” he mutters, turning his back to her and slumping against the wall to sleep. 

She watches his uneven breathing with anticipation filling her chest. “I’m going to find you guys,” she whispers into the darkness.

* * *

The space center used to be one of the most respected institutions in the country. Working for their research division was Pidge’s dream once. Matt was accepted to the space exploration program, but before he could start there, the outbreak began. The scientists, including her dad, caught and studied some zombies for a while before things got bad enough to drive even humanity’s final hope underground. 

Pidge sits crouched in the cover of a dumpster, watching two hulking guys with heavy machine guns patrolling the entrance to the main building. A small spaceship stands in the lot in front, apparently ready to leave.

If Torin is right, and Matt and her dad were taken weeks ago, they'are unlikely to still be planetside. But that ship is her best chance of getting to wherever they are, or at least of following their trail.

 _“Not as big of a haul in this trip,”_ grunts a voice just out of her line of sight.

She inches closer to it, but the next moment she hears footsteps and immediately ducks back into cover. 

_“At least we're not going back empty handed,”_ another voice replies. 

Pidge can see them now as they make their way to the parked ship. They're burly men, dressed in more denim than she's ever seen on a single person, guns and knives tucked into various pockets, faces made for scowling. Everything about their appearance screams _hired muscle._

 _“This hellhole is so overrun,”_ the second man says, _“I don't understand how the boss expects us to keep finding him laborers.”_

Still conversing, they get on the ship. And Pidge is alone. Without thinking about what she's doing, she sprints forward, still crouched, and approaches the ship. The gangsters, or whatever they are, are facing away from the door as they mess with their control panel. She creeps on board and sneaks off down a random hallway. It's dark in this part of the ship, but she keeps an eye out for cameras. Something about those guys makes her doubt they'll be watching for a stowaway, but it won't do to be spotted before even leaving the planet. 

She creeps forward until she finds what has to be the prisoner hold. Narrow doors are embedded into the wall, a handful are shut but the rest lay open, revealing small unfurnished rooms. One room houses a large screen with a control panel, taking up one entire wall of the room. Just as she starts to question why there isn't a single surveillance camera even in the hold, a mechanical whir sounds down the hall. 

She whips around to see a little drone making its way over. _That explains it._ Its green searchlight is done with the wall to its left and is making its way toward her. Another moment and she'll be spotted. 

With no other choice, she rushes into the control room in front of her and hides herself in the corner between the open door and the adjacent wall. She pulls out her blaster, its weight still uncomfortable in her hand, and holds her breath until she hears the drone whir away down the hall. Exhaling slowly, she slides down with her back against the thin stretch of wall.

There's nothing to do now but wait.

* * *

She wakes to gunfire and distant shouts of panic. She must’ve dozed off at some point. Every sense now on high alert, she tucks herself tightly into the corner again, blaster gripped in both hands with the safety off. 

She waits, and waits. Ominous rumbling joins the shouts, but no one comes for her. 

All of a sudden, the ship begins to hurtle, and Pidge is knocked to the ground. She tries getting back on her feet, but the shaking only grows more violent. 

Moments later, all movement comes to an abrupt halt as the force of an impact reverberates through the walls and floor. Even Pidge, who’s never been on a plane before, much less a spaceship, can tell that they’ve crashed. 

_"Ace pilot, my ass!"_ someone shouts. 

Pidge gingerly stands, crouched and ready to spring into action. The shouting match outside turns suddenly to uninhibited screams that grow more distant by the second. A rush of footsteps outside her door indicates the other prisoners have been released. Yet here she stands, trapped as ever. 

The ship begins to rattle. The screaming cuts off as suddenly as it began, only to be replaced by slow footsteps--except they aren’t really footsteps. It's more of a dragging sound. The hairs on Pidge’s arms stand on end. She needs to know what's going on. 

She steps over to the dead console of the surveillance system. Now if she could just….

Her fingers fly across the control pad, and she's in. The control panel populates with alien glyphs and esoteric maps; this is no Earthen ship. But apparently, hacking comes as easily to her as ever. 

Getting into the cameras and setting up her own video feed is child’s play. But Pidge is _not_ prepared for the images that fill the screen. 

Gray, emaciated corpses limp and drag their way through the corridors. Her eyes flit from feed to feed with growing horror. 

The ship is overrun. 

She swipes to the next set of feeds and clamps a hand over her mouth, retching. But her empty stomach sends up nothing but sharp acid and her own spit. Her eyes seek out the video again of their own accord. The crew and prisoners apparently attempted to flee the ship after the crash and are meeting disastrous results. 

They are being picked apart and devoured. Their skulls lie split open on the ground a few paces from the ship’s doors, any traces of spilled brains already gone. The biters, swarming around each other to get their fill, are now making do with the remaining flesh clinging to bone.

Pidge blinks away tears. The crash would’ve drawn the walkers to the ship, but why did everyone go outside? Did the doors somehow unlock upon crashing?

She is rudely jolted from her thoughts when a pair of those dragging footsteps approach in the corridor outside her cell, accompanied by a ghastly, rattling imitation of breathing. 

She slams a hand on the control panel, and the door to the control room slides shut. She takes a shaky breath. She is safe as long as the biters stay on the other side of that door. But if she can’t get out, she’ll just die later instead of now. She turns back to the screen still broadcasting the horrors going down mere yards away, and minimizes the feeds, looking for a way into the ship’s controls. 

Her mission is still in its earliest stages. And she isn’t about to give up just yet.


	2. A Journey Much Longer

Garish purples and reds fill the screen at her touch. Controls in a foreign tongue taunt her, and she grinds her teeth in frustration. Pidge isn’t going to be stopped by a mere inability to _read_. She chuckles humorlessly; there's a thought she hasn't had since she was three. And she can't very well tinker with the controls to find out what they do, like how she got so good at computers back home, not when one wrong move can put her in the hands of biters. 

She got the door to work. She can figure the rest out too. 

After a solid forty-five minutes of staring at the symbols and their arrangements across the screen, she begins to see a pattern. She navigates her way through a few screens, determining that what she can do from this room is limited to opening and closing doors and firing the ship’s blasters. 

She can work with that. 

Eyes fixed on the screen, hoping she's pushing the buttons in the right order, Pidge makes her way into the weapons system. She figures she must be doing it right because the screen suddenly shows her the terrain all around the crashed ship. It looks deserted—no signs of life. All the biters are clustered in and around the ship itself. She slides her fingers across the controls and the view shifts. Deciding on a rock formation that's likely make a lot of noise, she stills her fingers and hears heavy guns click into place. Her other hand poised over another control, she sets off the blasters. Deafening shots ring out on the rocks she aimed at, accompanied by bright flashes of purple light. The floor shakes lightly beneath her feet. Turning the blasters to automatic, she uses her other hand to release the main doors and zooms in again on the feed from the surveillance drones. 

Her plan…actually seems to be working. Walkers are dragging their way out of the ship, drawn to the light and sounds. She doesn't realize she was expecting the plan to fail until the surprise of its success rushes through her. She actually might not die here. 

She watches and waits until most of the walkers make it to the rocks to search the commotion for prey. And then she shuts the ship’s doors, making sure they're locked this time, and blasts those zombies into confetti. Sticky, smelly, ashen confetti. Once they get with the program, they finally start to run _away_ from the gunfire, but she aims and keeps firing, like in those first person shooter games she used to play with Matt. She watches on her screen as possessed human remains blow up, and she's breathing hard by the time it's over. She swivels the view around a few times but there's no one left standing. Any she didn't shoot must have run away. But there are bound to be more where those came from. 

The ship is silent.

Repressing a gag at the grotesque scene, she quickly switches back to the drones’ feeds, and the visuals match with what she hears. Silence. The ship appears deserted, at least as far as the drones can see. 

After a moment of tinkering, she gets the control room’s door to open. Why was it so much easier to close it? 

She steps out cautiously, blaster drawn and ready to fire for all it's worth. It's only been a few hours since she snuck on board, but everything looks and feels so different. Even with her nose still desensitized from the sewers, she can smell the biters were here. The sleek metal hallways are all the more eerie as she creeps toward the cockpit, braced for attack by a straggler at any moment, But she sees no one. 

Until she reaches the cockpit. 

One crouches by the pilot’s seat, chewing on a torn off hand. It has cleaned off the fingers and is chewing messily on the palm when it hears her. Clutching its prize tightly in one hand, it stands to face her. She points her blaster at it, and as it comes into the light, she gets a better look. She instantly wishes it had stayed in the dark. It's about her height, though much broader, with what might once have been bright pink tentacles hanging dully, limply from its head. Fresh blood drips from its wide, flat mouth as it shuffles toward her on its three spindly legs. 

She holds her breath and pulls the trigger, releasing multiple blasts at its head. Multiple because her aim is shit, and with each miss her heart hammers more frantically, until she finally lands a hit between the eyes. It stares at her for a moment, unblinking, before staggering and crumpling to the ground. It twitches exactly two times, and then is still.

She finally met an alien, and it's undead. And she killed it. 

Against all better judgment, the blaster leaves her hand to clatter on the floor, a mere foot away from its first victim. Well. This probably wasn’t that _blaster’s_ first victim, given where she got it, but rather, _her_ first victim. 

The mechanical whirring that startled her all those hours ago brings her back to the moment again, and she jumps, scrambling to pick up the dropped weapon. The drone continues to make its patrols, as if any of this still matters. Its light falls on her and the drone flashes red. Immediately, the main control panel starts blaring, 

“Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!”

Pidge smiles. This is a clever little thing, isn't it? She can appreciate elegant tech even when it thinks she's the enemy. Reaching out a careful hand, she plucks the little pyramid out of the air and examines its controls. They're simple, yet so beautiful.

With a horde of zombies blasted outside and one dead at her feet, she needs a win that will actually feel like a win. She gets to work on the drone, fingers switching between its buttons and the ship’s main control panel. 

It takes a few minutes, and then the drone’s light goes from red to green. It's reset and ready to work for her. She lets go and it hovers benignly before her. 

“I'm gonna call you Rover,” she announces, grinning for the first time in days. Its light blinks in understanding, or perhaps approval. Now that, is a win. 

Grin fading, she gulps and looks back at the zombie she killed. If she's going to have any chance of getting this ship off the ground and escaping this infested hellscape, she's going to need that rotting flesh out of here. But she can't open the door to dump it outside without attracting more biters again, and she doesn't want to touch it without knowing how the plague spreads. 

She glances at Rover, gears shifting in her brain. “I might have a job for you.” 

She pulls up a layout of the ship on the control panel. The ship is too small to have multiple levels, but there is a little storage compartment in the floor of the prisoner hold. That will have to do. 

“Can you get this zombie into storage?” she asks Rover, wondering if the fist-sized drone will be up to the task.

But her doubts prove unfounded. Rover zooms down, positions himself strategically under the limp form, and rises up. The walker is splayed out over the little robot, its center of gravity balanced perfectly. Rover rises just until the walker’s legs leave the ground and sets off. Pidge jumps out of his way and watches the bizarre sight; it looks like the dead walker is suspended in the air and floating down the narrow corridor. 

Shaking her head to rid herself of the image, she makes her way to the pilot’s seat. Despite all the time she just spent on her feet, sitting down again feels wrong, like she's letting down her guard or giving herself a false sense of security. Shoving the rising panic back down, she turns her full attention to the control panel. Now, finally for some answers. 

This screen thankfully has English controls, which makes sense given that the goons she saw earlier were American humans. She tries not to think about the fact that they're dead now. 

She pulls up the information store and discovers the ship was heading for the Sentrax system. 

Looks like aliens are leagues ahead of Earth in space travel. 

If Sentrax, wherever that is, is where those prisoners were being taken, that's her best bet on where her family might be. This is closer than she hoped to get when she left her mom that note. It feels like a lifetime ago already. 

Her thoughts drift to her mother, and what she said when Pidge hinted at wanting to go above ground. _“I don't have any family left to lose after you.”_ And Pidge left her with nothing more than a note, in the midst of people who made her…uneasy, at best. Pidge’s imagination supplies her with scenarios where her mom reads the note and breaks down in tears, where her mom falls into a deep depression. She tells herself her mother is strong, and that this will all be worth it, and that not looking for Matt and their dad is by far the greater of the two evils. But none of that alleviates her guilt. 

Trying not to think about her mom anymore, Pidge pokes around in the navigation system. If the destination was a planet humans have never heard of, there's bound to be a map here. 

‘Files corrupted due to physical damage,’ the computer tells her as she attempts to open the navigation details. ‘Attempting to recover information.’

“No,” she mutters under her breath. “Not now.” She hasn't come this far to be thwarted by a corrupted file. The crash must have damaged part of the computer. 

‘Recovery unsuccessful. Displaying available data.’

_No._

The screen populates with what should be a map, except huge chunks are missing. Including the Sentrax system. All it shows clearly is where she is currently: a moon, in a system she can't place in relation to Earth, near a turbulent asteroid field. Well, that explains the crash. But in terms of telling her how to get to Sentrax, it's useless. 

“Don't give up yet, Pidge,” she tells herself, even as dread wells up inside her. 

She can hear her dad’s voice in her head telling her to soldier on when things get tough. “The real test isn't whether you can solve an easy problem. Katie, you have the kind of mind that can tackle even the most impossible seeming situation. So never give up. I believe in you, kiddo.”

So what can she do with nothing but a planet name and a sorely incomplete map? 

She knows she's on a moon, and that she needs to get off it so she can find some people…aliens…with a proper map. 

She turns to the console again and runs a scan of the moon for life forms. The screen shows her the moon is full of them. In fact there's a group of three a few yards from her ship. _What?_ She looks out the window and sees three walkers, ambling away from the destruction she wrought earlier. 

So turns out the scanner has no way of differentiating between the living and the undead. Sighing, she zooms in on the map again. The moon’s planet is on it, and with a few intuitive gestures, she finds out she's able to program its coordinates as the ship’s new destination. 

Rover makes his way back to her, apparently having completed his task, just in time to witness Pidge put her decision into action. This ship was readied for a journey longer than the one it made, and _much_ longer than the one it's about to, so Pidge doesn't bother figuring out how to check the fuel. She initiates the launch sequence, and feels her pulse pick up with the ship’s rumbling. A progress bar for the launch shows up on the screen…and then the rumbling abruptly stops. 

All is still for one very confusing second before the next message displays. ‘Launch unsuccessful. Check hydraulic stabilizers. Reconnect thermal pipe.’

This ship is starting to remind Pidge of her mom’s old printer and its constant paper jams. She grunts in frustration and kicks the console’s base. 

_Clang!_

It's hollow. She tries to push her seat back and remembers this isn't her desk chair in her old room. She slides off the seat and bends down to get a better look. There's a hatch. It's embedded so seamlessly into the metal that she doesn't even notice it until getting close. There doesn't seem to be any way to open it manually, so she reaches up to the control panel again, searching until she finds the right command. The hatch slides open. 

She peers inside to find wires of every color and pipes of varying diameters. She doubts the hydraulic stabilizers are in here—though she honestly can't be sure—but some of those pipes must've gotten dislodged in the crash. 

She gets up onto her knees to check out the console again. When the printer back home needed a part replaced or reset, there would usually be an animated tutorial that would play in the machine’s little window. Maybe there's a video on here that can show her how to repair this hunk of metal garbage. 

But after a thorough search, she comes up with nothing. Looks like she's on her own, besides the mechanical engineering buzzwords of course. 

With a growing sense of despair, she sits back down to look into the hatch again. There are more wires and pipes and switches than she knows what to do with. And there isn't any one very obvious gap with an accompanying piece lying on the floor for her to pick up and replace. She's a tech expert, hacking prodigy, software genius; but when it comes to a purely hardware problem, an _alien_ hardware problem, she is helpless. 

Katie Holt hates being helpless. 

She turns around and sits leaning against the console base. She rests her arms on her knees and her head on her arms, and begins to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Expect some new characters to show up next chapter! 
> 
> If you're enjoying this story, please drop me a comment; it would mean a lot! <3


	3. At Odds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to go with my gut here and switch to present tense. So if you've been following this story, I'm sorry if the shift from past tense feels jarring. But I've updated the 1st two chapters, so for anyone just starting, you can ignore this note XD. On that note, if anyone notices anything I've missed while changing the tense of the previous two chapters please let me know! Writing in past tense and then going back to change it all can certainly mean a few missed spots! Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter!

Damn the human need for sustenance. 

While she’s forcibly grounded, Pidge decides she might as well do something. She needs to think ahead and figure out a plan, but sitting still while doing it is only driving her up the wall. But what can she do stuck here with nothing to--

Her stomach growls. She presses a hand to it and groans.

“You’re lucky you don’t need to eat,” she says to Rover, getting up from the cold floor. She remembers seeing an inventory option on the screen when she tried to access the map. Dropping heavily into the seat, she props her head up on her hand and runs the commands. The pantry is located just behind the cockpit, and according to the computer, is fully stocked. Well that sounds suspiciously like good news. 

She gets up to see for herself, Rover helping her open the storage compartment. There are exactly three shelves, stocked up and packed tightly with sustenance packets. Below the three shelves are bottles of water. She picks up one of the packets. It’s small enough to fit in one hand, and inside looks to be some kind of grayish powder. She has a sudden bizarre thought that if Matt were here, he'd make a dumb joke about space drugs. Swallowing around the new thickness in her throat, she turns the packet over, inspecting it more closely. The tiny instructions on it are in an alien language and completely useless to her; she imagines she'll have to add water to expand it into something edible. Despite her stomach’s grumbling earlier, she seems to have lost her appetite all of a sudden. Rover whirs beside her in a tone that seems to say he too is quite glad he doesn't need to eat. 

With the one…meal…still clutched in one hand, she counts the stock on the shelves. Twenty-one sustenance packets. If she keeps to one meal a day, _if_ there’s enough water to prepare them all, the food will last her three weeks. The food she brought with her from Earth consists of a couple of protein bars and a half-liter water bottle. That can give her another couple of days.

She walks back into the control room, and looks out the windows. She has a little over three weeks to figure out how to get out of this hellscape, if something else doesn't get her first. 

Now that she doesn't have swarming zombies to focus on, she can actually afford to take in the surroundings of the moon. It’s a plain with tall yellow grasses extending in all directions. The couple of walkers that managed to escape her attack made off into those very grasses. 

The monotony of yellow is broken by large, brittle-looking rocks of varying sizes every few yards. The formation she shot up earlier was one of the larger ones, but further out, there seem to be actual mountains. Small ones, but mountains. She’s never even had a chance to see any mountains back on Earth. Her dad always promised to take her someday. She spent a good chunk of her life looking forward to a family vacation to the mountains. And now, here she is. 

She wonders if there are any survivors anywhere else on this moon. Those mountains either house survivors or more biters. But she has no idea how many more hungry corpses are lurking in those grasses, and wading through them to get to the mountains is certain suicide. 

Blinking back her tears, she looks at the packet of supposed food in her hand. “Time to make dinner, Rover.”

* * *

Pidge always found those parts of sci-fi books and movies really cool when someone who’s lost or stranded keeps a daily log of their experiences. If they don't make it, the log becomes a part of history; and if they do, it’s a way to remember every detail of the ordeal. 

Now, on the other side of the equation, the prospect of making such a log herself doesn't seem so cool. But she knows she should. For her own sanity as much as for documentative purposes.

> **Day 2 on Yorium**  
>  My watch still has power, so it's been 1 day in Earth time since I got here. The days here are much shorter than on Earth. 
> 
> I’m restricting myself to 1 sustenance packet per Earth day. They're a small amount of powder that you add water to. It took me a few attempts before I figured out how much water to add. I was afraid of using too much and running out, but today’s meal was much more palatable than yesterday's. It’s basically a bread-like thing. It's really chewy. It better be nutritious because I can't taste my own mouth by the time I'm done with it. I never thought I'd say this, but I miss Mom’s cooking. But it is filling, so I guess there's that. 
> 
> Still no clue on how to get out of here. I wondered if I could make contact with someone on the nearby planet, and I searched the controls but couldn't operate the communicator. I'm pretty sure I'm doing it right, but it must've gotten damaged during the crash. I did learn that the atmosphere on this moon has only 65% oxygen, which is interesting.
> 
> The plan for tomorrow is to search the ship again more thoroughly to see if I can find any useful materials. There's also the problem of the zombie in storage. The smell is starting to seep out, but disposing of it would mean getting closer to it and I am not interested in that. 

* * *

After two weeks in the ship, Pidge starts getting used to waking up with clinical white walls assaulting her eyes and a distant, rotting smell in her nose. 

And that realization, that she could get used to even this, spurs some adrenaline back into her system. She can't give up. She cannot let things be as bad as they seem. 

But that adrenaline serves no other purpose than a tightness in her gut. Her fingers buzz with energy that has no outlet. She already tried and failed to get the ship’s communicator to work. She analyzed the ship’s makeup as best she could from the layout, determining that she could, theoretically, build her own communicator from the ship’s parts. But she has never built anything of that scale before. And even if she could make it, with the ship dismantled, she'd have no way to power it. Not to mention no way to get off this dump. 

Buzzed on adrenaline, Pidge paces in the cramped space of the control room, grumbling when Rover gets in her way. “Hey, I'm trying to think here!” she snaps when he bobs incessantly in her face. 

He whirs excitedly, before turning his pointed face toward the front window. She follows his robot gaze and gasps. She gets as close to the window as possible to get a better look. 

Smoke. 

A plume of smoke rises from the distant mountains. Faint, wispy, but still visible. 

Where there is smoke there is fire, and where there is fire, there are people. Or at least _a_ person. 

As she watches that smoke rise into the air, she allows self-awareness to seep in, of her queasy stomach, her cold skin, her greasy hair, her grimy body, and that increasingly putrid smell wafting from the storage compartment. 

Seven Earth days. Seven days before she runs out of food. Then, a slow and painful death from starvation and dehydration. 

Or, she sets off to find those people now, and she either dies on the way over at the hands of biters, or the biters don't get her but the campers turn out to be hostile. 

But there’s also a third possibility. That the campers are friendly survivors who can help her. And _that_ is the only scenario that doesn't guarantee her death. So compared to the three other options that do, it’s the obvious choice. 

With a decisive furrow to her brow, she looks back up at the window. 

But the smoke is gone.

* * *

“Got everything?” she asks out loud, as much to herself as to Rover. It’s not like she has a lot of possessions to keep track of. Her bag is packed with the now smelly change of clothes she’s gone through a few times in the past week. In a separate pocket of the bag is the one protein bar she’s managed to not eat yet, the remaining sustenance packets, and the water. 

She slings her glorified gym bag over her shoulders and tucks her blaster into the waistband of her shorts, flinching at the initial contact of the cold metal against her skin. Then she walks up to the control panel and picks up the blades. 

They’re a curious pair of angular katars that wrap around her knuckles, leaving a sharp arrow-shaped point sticking out laterally from her fist. She swings her hands through the air in front of her; the handle feels more comfortable in her grip than the blaster ever has. The two shallowly angled edges seem like they would be perfect to slash with. 

Rover floats a safe distance from her hands and beeps his approval. 

“Let’s just hope I don’t have to get close enough to use them,” she says, clenching her fists. 

She looks out the window. The smoke hasn’t reappeared since that first time she saw it. The sun is just past setting, darkness starting to settle over the terrain. There’s a stretch of the grassy yellow plain right outside the door where she’ll be completely exposed before she can get to the cover of the rocks. She doesn’t see any biters out in the open, which either means she managed to get most of them during her shooting spree earlier or that she’s going to get nabbed the moment she steps outside. 

She tries, futilely, to let out some of her tension with a short, harsh sigh. 

Well, no point in stalling any further. 

Pidge takes a deep breath, tightens her hold on her bag’s strap, and opens the door.

Cool night air hits her face like a splash of water. Taking in a gasp of breath, she steps onto the grass and starts running. Feet pounding, arms pumping, she runs for the rocks in the direction where she saw the smoke. Sharp blades of grass nick her legs as she dashes across the field. She hears no other sound than her own panting as she reaches a rock just large enough to cover her crouched form. Back pressed against the uncomfortable stone, she looks over at Rover; his lights appear overbright in the still night. Still breathing hard--too hard for only having run a few seconds--she remembers this moon’s atmosphere has less oxygen than she’s used to.

“That smoke better be worth it,” she mutters, peeking out from behind her rock to make sure the coast is clear. It is, and she makes for the next rock. Moving from cover to cover, she travels until her leg muscles ache, until the grasses thin out to give way to larger rocks. 

Mind distracted by the discomfort shooting through her fatigued legs, she steps out from behind a boulder without looking and nearly shouts in surprise. A biter, with sallow beige skin and two short horns on its almost-human head, stands swaying in place, not two steps in front of her, as if debating which way to walk, Before it can smell her, she reaches for it. It’s taller than she is, but in a second, she manages to slam both fists against its skull. Her katars go through the rotting bone more easily than she expected; or maybe she just put that much force behind the blow. Either way, it staggers for a second, fluid and brains oozing out of two brand new holes, before dropping silently to the ground.

She backs away from it, breathing no harder than she was a moment ago. She gazes upon the alien corpse, waiting for the wave of nausea that hit her last time. But it doesn’t come. Her hands are only shaking a little, and she expects that’s mostly from the fatigue of running around in a low oxygen atmosphere. She’s still disgusted, most definitely. But why was this so much easier a second time?

She looks out toward the mountains again; the smoke hasn’t made a comeback since that first time she saw it. Was it just a trick of her mind? Some of her confidence falters as she looks at the uniformity of the landscape. They’re all just mountains, and using the cover of the rocks to move about has confused her sense of direction. “I can figure this out,” she mutters. “I just need--”

She hears Rover beep in warning a split second before she feels a large, strong hand clamp over her mouth. Her scream is effectively muffled as she tries to punch and kick at her attacker. But he brings his other arm around her middle, locking her arms against her sides. 

She looks down at the hands holding her; they’re dark brown, not rotting, and _human._ Not sure whether to be relieved or fear for her life, she struggles some more. It’s futile; the hold is too strong. 

“Please stop struggling,” a warm voice says just behind her ear. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

 _I’ll stop if you let go of me_ , she wants to yell. She tries to drive her hands backward, hoping to get him in the thigh with her katar. But the more she struggles, the more leaden the guy’s hands start to feel. He’s too strong. Cursing her own weakness, she goes limp.

He doesn’t release her right away. “Don’t scream okay? You’ll just draw rotters to us.” There’s a pause, as if he’s considering whether or not he can trust her not to be stupid. Then he sighs and picks her up as if she weighs no more than a bunch of grapes. The guy is careful to keep his hold tight on her forearms so she can’t use the katars. The other hand is still on her mouth, making sure she won’t scream.

As he carries her off toward the mountains, she tries to see the path they’re taking, but any movement makes him tighten his grip, and it gets uncomfortable enough after a while that she decides to stay still. Eventually, they reach the face of a mountain, and the guy climbs a short distance to a shallow cave. Once inside, he finally sets her down but still doesn’t release her. 

Her eyes take a moment to adjust to the dark, and when they do, she gapes. With human hands still holding her, she looks into the face of a human in front of her, friendly smile completely at odds with the brutality with which she was brought here.


	4. Acquaintances

“Who do we have here?”

The flirty tone amidst the leaden arms holding her in this dank cave strikes Pidge as so completely bizarre that she wants to dissolve into hysterical laughter. But as it stands, the strong hand is still clamped over her mouth. So she stays still. 

“I found her lurking by the perimeter,” comes the warm voice from behind her. “She must’ve seen the smoke. I told you you let the fire get too big!” he scolds.

The guy she’s facing bristles. “I lit it for like two extra seconds! The meat was still raw, dude! I'm not tryna get sick.” 

There's an exasperated sigh from behind her. “Well now we've been discovered.”

Pidge squirms, still no closer to knowing whether these people are good guys or bad. Rover isn't with her, and she wonders if he managed to hide when she was ambushed and if he can help her somehow. 

The guy returns his attention to her, approaching cautiously. As he steps closer, Pidge sees he's a few years older than she is. He's wearing a faded olive green hoodie that, along with his tired but friendly eyes, makes him look like a college student. Maybe he was, before things went wrong. But what is he doing here on this forsaken moon?

“Hey there. Sorry about being so rude,” he says, gesturing to the arms still locked around her. “But we need to be careful.”

“We made the mistake of trusting people before,” the voice behind her adds. 

“And we can't afford to be loud or draw attention to ourselves—”

“Like building a huge fire,” the other guy interrupts, “and letting it burn too long.”

“— _because_ ,” the first guy continues, “otherwise rotters will swarm us, and we can't fight that many at once.”

“So I'll let you go, but you have to promise not to scream or shout. No one’s gonna come except rotters.”

 _That's reasonable._

“And I see you have some cool-looking weapons,” the guy facing her nods toward the katars on her hands. “Don't bother trying to use them.” He lifts up his hoodie to reveal a sliver of slim waist and, more importantly, a blaster tucked into the waistband of his jeans. 

_That's…excessive._

She nods. 

Immediately, the tight hold falls away. 

She spins around to face him, fists clenched around her katars. He looks just as big as she imagined. He too is a few years older than she is, face serious but not unkind. A heavy-looking gun is strapped to his back. He looks backs at her somewhat apologetically. 

She turns back to the other guy, and he smiles too. “I'm Lance. This is my friend Hunk. Now, what's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

Pidge debates how much to tell them. From what little she's heard, they're survivors eking out a living from this cave. But does she trust them? They haven't hurt her yet. But the last humans she saw were rounding up slave labor. 

Ultimately, she decides to go with an abbreviation of the truth. “I need to get off this moon.” 

Hunk chuckles. “Same here.”

“I'm Pidge,” she adds, because they've told her their names. 

“Nice to meet you, Pidge,” says Lance. He sits down on the floor of the cave, and gestures for her to join him. 

She does, forcing herself to ignore the wetness of the ground beneath her. 

Hunk plants himself on her other side and says, “Well I didn't see anyone else around except her. So I guess we're safe.”

“For now,” Lance murmurs. 

“How did you guys end up here?” Pidge blurts, curiosity winning over her caution. 

Lance's expression saddens at her words. He appears lost in thought. Hunk’s lips thin, and after a moment, he starts to answer. “We’re—we _were_ —students at the Galaxy Garrison.”

“So you _are_ from Earth!” she exclaims. 

Hunk nods. “They sent us here on a scouting mission. Just dropped us off, told us to collect samples and keep logs of the life forms and weather and stuff. But after they left, we realized the _life forms_ here were quickly becoming undead.”

“We basically arrived while the virus or whatever it is was spreading,” Lance picks up. “Once we figured out what was going on, we tried to stay out of sight. We still had to fight some of them but we avoided that as much as we could. Because any sound draws them, and I may be a sharpshooter but even I have my limits.” 

“Finding this cave was a crazy stroke of luck.” Hunk smiles for the first time since she's met him. It makes his whole face glow briefly. “It's secluded and high enough that rotters don't bother us here. But who knows how long that security will last. Every day that they don't wander here feels like we're just pushing our luck.” 

His face is shadowed by a darkness again as he says these last words, and Pidge realizes that fear has hardened him. In that moment, it feels like she can trust these people. “If you were sent here by the Garrison,” she says, “why didn't they come back for you? Better yet, why not just give you your own ship to come here in? Why the unreliable taxi service?”

Lance sighs bitterly. “They wouldn't give us our own ship, because they only had a couple to begin with and couldn't afford for one to be out of commission while we were here. When we contacted them to let them know what was going on here and requested early extraction, they said they couldn't risk flying us back and bringing the contagion to Earth. So they told us to stay put and wait while they figured out a solution.”

Pidge closes her eyes. She knows what happened next; she doesn't want to hear it. But Hunk tells her anyway. 

“Then we didn't hear anything from them for weeks, then months. We tried getting in touch again, but there's nothing on the other end. Like their comms are offline.”

She nods, sadness welling up inside her. “The space center and the Garrison are abandoned now. Most of Earth is overrun.” 

Hunk swears loudly, while Lance shakes his head. “That was the worst case scenario we kept imagining. Wasn't it, big guy?”

“Yeah,” Hunk agrees, voice barely steady. “But we kept hoping it wasn't true.”

“The best case scenario was that the GG were being assholes but the rest of Earth was safe,” Lance tells Pidge. 

Pidge has only been stranded for a few weeks. These guys have been stuck for months. It occurs to her that should offer some words of comfort. "That really sucks," is all she can manage. "I'm sorry."

The two friends chuckle. "It really does," Hunk says.

After enough time has passed that it doesn’t feel rude to change the subject, Pidge asks her next burning question. “So what do you guys do for food? I’ve been surviving on sustenance packets from the ship. But you mentioned meat earlier?” She poses it as a question. 

“There’s small animals that wander through every so often,” Lance replies. “We cook and eat them.”

“Every so often?” That doesn’t sound like a very reliable food source.

“We hunt them.” Hunk’s clarification is brutally honest, but there is discomfort etched across his features as well as Lance’s. “The smoke you saw was from our cooking fire.”

“We’re usually careful not to let it get too big.” Lance appears to be chiding himself. “We put it out as soon as we realized. But the smoke….” he trails off.

Hunk picks up, “I went to check out whether any rotters had caught sight of it before it dissipated.”

“And you found me instead,” Pidge finishes for him.

“Well a couple of rotters I took down,” he pats the hilt of a dagger peeking out of a pocket, “and you.” 

They’re back to silence again, but this time it only lasts a couple of seconds before a bright white blur zooms into the cave and slams into Lance’s face.

He falls backward with a grunt. 

“What the hell?!” Hunk gets to his feet and reaches for the huge gun on his back before thinking better of it and pulling out his bloodstained dagger instead. 

And not a moment too soon. The projectile whizzes straight for him. 

Next to him, Pidge brings her fists up over her face, muscles tense and ready to lash out with the katars the moment it comes for her. But then an angry whir rings out, amplified against the stone walls. It’s a sound that’s become more familiar to her in the past days than her own voice. “Rover!”

“What’s going on?” Lance demands, sitting up and pinching his bleeding nose. 

“Rover, stop!” she cries.

With an impatient beep, the robot halts in midair, only to do a crafty loop-de-loop to dodge Hunk’s dagger. Lance raises his blaster, aiming with one eye closed. “I got him!” he announces, finger on the trigger.

“NO!” Pidge rushes forward, waving her arms to distract Lance. “Everyone, stop.” 

They don’t lower their weapons but turn to gape at her, waiting for an explanation. 

“Rover, it’s okay! They’re nice.” 

The little robot hums uncertainly. 

“Guys, this is Rover. He’s trying to rescue me. I was wondering where you went, little guy.”

“I don’t trust it,” Lance states, wiping at the blood on his face, while Hunk cautiously approaches with interest, one finger extended as if about to poke it. 

Rover inches forward and boops Hunk’s finger. Hunk gasps softly, then snorts with amusement. 

Once they all seem to decide not to kill each other, Pidge sits back down. “Great, now we’re all introduced.”

“Well,” Lance interjects, “you know all about us, and we know you have a tiny murderous robot working for you. So,” he turns his sharp gaze on her, “what's your story?”

Having only just started to relax after Rover’s admirable rescue mission, Pidge stiffens again at the sudden scrutiny directed at her. She realizes she can't stall anymore. "I…was on a ship that crashed here," she begins, deciding not to go too deep into the backstory. But in case these space cadets have information, she does say, "The ship was headed for Sentrax. Do you know of it?" 

"Sentrax? Never heard of it." Lance's casual dismissal feels like a devastating blow to the gut. "A crash huh?" he muses. 

"That explains the quake we felt," says Hunk. "We couldn't see any ship from here though. How far away did you crash?"

She tells him about how it took a few hours to walk here. 

"How'd you manage it without getting torn apart?" Lance questions. 

She hesitates, not wanting to relive the stress of it. But they're both watching her expectantly, and she feels obligated to say something. "When the ship crashed, they were all drawn to it, so I shot them with the ships blasters. So that cleared the coast but I still stayed inside the ship for as long as I could. Then when I saw the smoke, I decided to take a risk." She tells them a bit about using the cover of the rocks and how, in her fatigue, she almost snuck up on a walker. 

They listen, Lance enraptured but Hunk looking alternately skeptical and deeply impressed. 

"So if you have a ship," Hunk asks, "why not just fly it out of here? Why come looking for us?"

"And how come you're alone?" Lance adds. 

They're reasonable questions, but they irritate her nonetheless. She doesn't like having the attention directed at her and suddenly feels impatient for answers to _her_ questions. But she bites back her anger to reply. "The other guys on the ship tried to escape and were attacked. I figured I'd have a better shot if I hid inside. And I tried to fly the ship, but I'm not a pilot. Besides, it's damaged from the crash."

"Did you run diagnostics? Surely, that would tell you what to fix." Hunk is sitting up straighter now, as if the conversation has just started to engage him. "Or is it parts you need?"

"I don't know," she admits, the frustration of the past few weeks rearing its ugly head in her mind. "I know tech, but I'm more of a software person. I have no idea how to re-align thermal pipes or replace whatever else." 

Hunk smiles again, but this time, it's not amused. It's triumphant, hopeful. 

"Looks like you're in luck, Pidge." Lance looks happy too when she turns to him. 

"We all are," Hunk corrects. "I'm an engineer, Pidge! A mechanical engineer. And I'm in the Garrison, or I _was_ , because spaceships are my specialty!" 

Pidge's heart begins to race with hope. "Can you fix it?" she demands. 

"My buddy here can fix anything," Lance boasts. 

"Not if it needs any replacement parts, I can't." Hunk looks nervous for a moment, but then he gulps, and his face hardens. "But otherwise, yeah I can fix it."

“Not for free,” Lance butts in awkwardly. 

“Yeah, our help is contingent on you getting us off this moon,” Hunk agrees. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Pidge replies, “if you can help me get my ship off the ground, you're welcome to join me.” She holds her tongue before she can blurt that she has no plans to return to Earth until she finds her family, choosing instead to emphasize something else. “But if you try to double-cross me,” she raises her fists, “I’ll sink these blades into you.”

But Hunk is apparently already with the program. “Chill, man; no need for that. We're going in different directions it seems, but I'll bet we can figure something out on Doryon.” Despite her threat, the two friends exchange grins that are full of hope. 

Doryon. Yorium’s planet. The next stop in finding Matt and her dad. After mind-numbing _days_ of hopelessness, here's a way forward. She nods at her new acquaintances. “Let's do this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was planning to include a couple more scenes in this chapter, but I reached a natural break here, so I decided to post. Hope you're enjoying the new developments!


	5. Alive with Hunger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Getting off Yorium doesn't seem so impossible now that Pidge has Hunk and Lance with her. But reaching the ship won't be without strife.

_“So how do we know she’s not just leading us to our deaths, or worse?”_

_“What’s worse than death?”_

_“Uh, torture, slavery….”_

_“Why are you making me think of that stuff??”_

Pidge whips around. “Can you two stop stage-whispering? I’m barely two feet away from you!”

They’re making their way out of the cave and down to ground level, with Hunk and Lance leading the way and Pidge following close behind.

“Well,” Lance pipes up, “I’m genuinely concerned!” 

“Fine,” Pidge sighs as her feet touch flat ground. “I’ll walk ahead, since I know where we’re going. And you guys can be sure you’re not walking into a trap.”

Lance and Hunk exchange a brief glance before nodding. But it’s not without skepticism.

Pidge walks past them without another word. The only way she can convince them she’s for real is by leading them to the ship. But their unease does make her feel better about trusting them. They’re so worried about _her_ potential betrayal, they seem unlikely to be plotting one of their own. 

Rover has gone ahead to scout the path, and Pidge follows his ghostly white form. Three humans and one drone trek softly through too-tall grasses with rays of warm golden sunshine starting to light the way. 

They walk, and they walk…. 

And nothing happens. They encounter no one. No smell of rotting flesh to singe their nose hairs. No raspy breathing or dragging feet to make them jump.

“It’s quiet…. Too quiet,” Lance whispers dramatically, voicing Pidge’s thoughts in the one way she never would’ve phrased them. 

“How many did you say you shot?” Hunk asks.

“A bunch, but nowhere near all of them.” She stops and looks around, squinting in the slowly receding darkness. _Where are they?_ “Stay alert,” she says, clenching her fists around her katars. “Hands on your weapons.”

Wordlessly, her new companions do exactly that. 

Rover continues to float determinedly toward the location of the ship. There’s nothing to do but follow. 

They creep forward, step by step. Every random breeze that ruffles her hair has her pulse quickening. 

Minutes go by until they lose track of time. And so Pidge can’t tell you how long it’s been by the time they finally see the ship. It’s up ahead in the clearing, right where she left it. 

But so is something else.

“Oh, my, god…” someone breathes. It doesn’t matter who. Not in the face of this.

A smattering of walkers, a couple dozen at least, are gathered around the ship. Just leisurely strolling. 

“You were saying this wasn’t a deathtrap!” Hunk whispers urgently. 

“I said there was a ship,” she retorts. “Never said walking over to it would be easy.” 

“Great.”

But if she’s being honest, she wasn’t expecting to have to wade through a swarm.

The three of them conceal themselves in the grasses overlooking the infested clearing. 

“Alright, what’ve we got?” Lance asks, focused eyes sizing up the walkers. 

“Firepower,” Pidge answers in an undertone. Two pairs of eyes turn to her, and she continues, “I’m counting twenty-three, and there might be a couple more that we can’t see from here. There’s three of us and we all have guns, so let’s say we each have to take down about nine of them. Hunk has a heavy rifle that could probably take out a whole bunch at once, while Lance’s and my blasters would be one at a time.” She’s muttering at this point, but the other two are listening raptly. 

“Yeah, I don’t know how to use this thing very well,” Hunk interrupts. His voice reminds Pidge that she has an audience. 

She narrows her eyes. “Where’d you get it, anyway?” Then she shakes her head and waves a dismissive hand. “Oh, that should be fine. I don’t think those things are meant to be aimed too precisely anyway.” 

“Rotters only die from headshots though,” Lance points out. “And I don’t know how familiar you are with this baby,” he pats the rifle strapped to Hunk’s back, “but it’s a whole lotta noise and not a lotta bullseyes.”

 _Oh._ Right. Bigger guns mean bigger sound. 

“So basically we have two useful guns.” Lance eyes Pidge. “How’s your aim?”

She has flashbacks of needing three tries to hit a walker right in front of her face. “It’s shit.”

Hunk chuckles humorlessly. “Same.”

Lance just nods matter-of-factly. “Then we need a different plan. You said you distracted them with noise before?”

She points to the brittle rocks that served her so well earlier. A good chunk is blasted right off. 

“Perfect.”

Change of plans then. “We’ll shoot the rocks from here,” she says, “and when the biters are distracted and clustered together, Hunk, you can gun them down with your rifle.” Just like she did from the ship.

“Half of that is a good idea,” Hunk responds. “Specifically, the part where they’re clumped together and I take them out. But I don’t think the first part would work.”

“These blasters don’t have the range to shoot those rocks from here,” Lance explains. “We’d have to get closer, otherwise we’d just draw them to us with the sound of laserfire.”

“You do it,” Hunk says, eyes on Pidge. His closed-off tone throws her off.

“What?”

“You led us right into a den of rotters. And Lance and I still don’t know what’s on that ship.”

“You still don’t trust me,” she realizes.

“Like I said, we’ve paid for not being suspicious before. So you go fire some shots on those rocks. We’ll stay here and pick them off when they approach the noise.”

Unease wells up in her chest, shoots down along her skin. “I get their attention; then what? You leave me to them and escape on the-- _my_ ship?” She’s struggling to keep her voice down, when all she wants to do is yell. 

“Take your robot with you,” Lance suggests, as if it’s a magnanimous offer. Though he does look a bit apologetic. 

A flare of anger spikes through her veins. Who the hell do these guys think they are to tell her what to do with her own drone? He’s technically stolen, but they don’t know that, and it’s beside the point.

“No,” she asserts. “Rover stays with you two. I’ll go cause the racket, and he’ll stay here to make sure you don’t leave without me.”

Rover lights up a soft green in affirmation, in lieu of his usual distinctive beep. Even he’s wary of drawing unwanted walker attention.

Hunk shrugs. “That sounds fair enough.”

It doesn’t sound fair to her, but she has to make do. She pulls her blaster out of her waistband, and even under her shirt, her skin feels exposed without the weapon pressing against it anymore. 

She stays crouched, stalking through the grasses until she comes upon the rocks. She doesn't want to risk shooting from too far away. Not when she could miss and not have crumbling rocks to mask the sound of her laserfire. 

She raises her arm as high as it will go and shoots the topmost part of the rock formation a couple of times. She figures the higher up the blasts, the more quickly they’ll draw attention.

She waits a beat, two, until she’s sure the walkers are coming. 

A dozen sunken, sagging faces turn in her direction. _Oh, they’re coming all right._

She stays a beat longer, until she hears the telltale sound of a heavy gun charging up. 

So, all according to plan, then.

She shifts her weight on her cramping legs, ready to half-crouch, half-sprint back to her fickle allies. But just as she gets ready to take off, a crumbling noise distracts _her_.

She looks back to see giant rocks hurtling toward her face. They must have gotten dislodged when she fired, choosing this moment to fall. 

She moves out of the way as fast as she can, no time to think about where she’s rolling. 

Curled into a ball, she’s out of the way not a moment too soon. The huge rocks crash to the ground, shattering upon impact. It’s noticeable despite the now raging gunfire nearby. A few shards still get her, but she's decidedly uncrushed, and she'll count that as a win. 

If only they would have fallen a half-second later, she would have been gone. 

Or maybe she should've left half a second sooner. 

Anyway, time to go. She lifts her head, and the moment her brain registers what her eyes see, her stomach plummets. Her legs freeze in place. 

This is not a win. 

She’s rolled right into the path of the oncoming biters.

_Crap._

“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!” Hunk bellows over the sound of his gun. “RUN!”

And so she does. 

She barrels across the clearing toward the ship’s door as fast as her short stature can carry her. She looks back to find Hunk and Lance catching up, quickly closing the distance to the ship. 

But so are the remaining walkers. 

Pidge's wild roll and dash has caught the attention of a good few walkers, pulling them away from Hunk’s aim. 

Lance is picking off what he can, but running while shooting isn't exactly helping his aim. 

She gets to the door only to find…she can't quite reach it. 

The ship crashed with one end higher than the other, and Pidge jumped when she got off. But now she has to get _on_ , and it’s too high to jump. Still, desperately hoping, she stretches up with her whole body, balancing on her tiptoes, and _reaches_.... The tips of her middle fingers just brush against the bottom edge of the door. “Curse my short arms,” she yells. 

Luckily, Lance is a beanpole. He’ll have to hand her in, like some nineteenth century gentleman. Ugh.

Lance and Hunk catch up, only beating the walkers’ numbers with their own speed. Hunk boosts up Lance, who clambers into the ship and reaches down to pull Pidge in. With Hunk boosting and Lance pulling, she makes it inside, running ahead to lock the doors as soon as Hunk makes it inside. 

For all the headway they made with their superior speed, the awkward climb into the ship sets them back. Biters clamber atop one another, working together to get at the three-course meal inside. A clump stupidly scratch at the door, but the remainder have found the windows that lie at ground level. They’re banging on the glass with surprising strength. 

It doesn’t matter. The doors are locked, and that glass will hold. 

Hunk is already at work, butt in the air and head buried in the console’s base. Rover zooms around him excitedly. Hunk emerges looking frazzled. “Pidge, I need to you hold this pipe in place; my arm won’t fit in here. Lance, you go find a lighter or something.” Orders given, he dives back in without waiting for affirmations. 

Pidge and Lance rush to obey, she dropping in front of the open panel and he running down the nearest corridor. Rover flies off after Lance.

The clamor by the window has gotten steadily louder. And even though her conscious mind is focused on Hunk’s directions (“You need to hold it at exactly the right angle or this won’t work!”), her heartbeat has steadily picked up too. She turns to look, against her better judgment, and finds a scene straight out of a bad horror movie. 

Dead faces, come alive with hunger, are pressed against the glass in a horrid mockery of children peering into a store window. Except this window is starting to crack. Fists immune to pain bang against the glass with a repetition fueled by single-minded hunger. Before Pidge’s very eyes, one of the tiny cracks gets considerably bigger.

She didn’t think it was possible, but it’s happening.

Her hands are sweating, and the pipe threatens to slip from her grasp as they wait for Lance to return. She should’ve told him where the store room was. _Dammit._

She doesn’t even know why Hunk needs the lighter, but every moment Lance doesn’t return with it, Pidge can feel the beads of moisture spreading along her upper lip. 

When Lance emerges from the hallway, out of breath and trailed by Rover, Hunk snatches the lighter out of his hands, interrupting the explanation of where he found it with a hurried “Hold these wires together.”

Pidge watches, kneeling on aching knees, trying and failing to still her trembling legs, as Hunk steadily holds a flame under two severed wires that he's twisted together. He gently tugs every so often, testing the integrity of the hold as he continues to weld them together. 

Pidge’s ears thud along with her heart, but she tunes back into rattling of the windowpane. 

It sounds increasingly unsteady. 

“How are those repairs coming, Hunk?” she calls. 

“Done!” he exclaims. “One of you, lift off!”

“On it.” Lance lets go of the now secure wires and runs the few steps to the flight control deck. A tense moment of fiddling later, he groans in frustration and panic. “It says the homing modulator’s obstructed.” 

“What on Earth does that mean?” Pidge demands. 

“And more importantly, can you fix it?” Lance adds.

Hunk’s eyes drift nervously to and from the window, as if he’s trying and failing to keep his eyes away. Going by his expressions of fear and panic, Pidge decides _not_ to look. 

“It has to be fixed from outside.”

 _“What?_ Pidge and Lance demand. 

“We can’t go back out there,” Pidge yells, while Lance desperately asks, “Can’t we do without that thingamajig?”

“Uh, yeah, if you want to fly manual all the way to Doryon. _I_ sure don’t know how to do that. Do you?”

Lance seethes, conflict written across his face as he’s forced to face the truth. “No,” he admits, jaw rolling resentfully around the word. 

_“We don’t have time for this!”_ Hunk reminds them, as the biters’ grunts grow louder through the enlarging cracks. He turns to Pidge, starting to ask whether she knows where the HM would be since it’s her ship, but before he can finish his question, Lance is opening the door.

“What—”

“Close the door after me!” he calls, and then he’s gone, slipped through while the handful of remaining walkers cluster by the window.

Pidge slams the door shut behind him and pulls up the video feeds of the ship’s exterior. A bare-bones diagram of the ship rotates in one corner of the screen, with a blinking red beacon to indicate the obstructed homing device. 

Well that explains how Lance knew where to go. 

Pidge forgets to breathe, and Hunk whimpers behind her as they watch grainy footage of Lance moving in a crouch. He's taking advantage of the hive mentality that has the biters clumped around the window. The cameras lose sight of him as he slips into a blind spot, and Pidge's breath comes rushing out her nose. 

The screen chimes with a new alert the same time as the circuitry Hunk was fiddling with sparks. 

“Ah, shit,” he exclaims, running off to fix whatever connection has come loose. 

Pidge catches sight of Lance again in the camera feeds; he's making his way back toward the door. But two biters have broken off from the group, perhaps attracted by the fresh smell of living flesh. They slink behind him, unintentionally clever in their silence. 

Heart thudding right into her throat, she goes to wait by the door, hand hovering over its keypad. Rover rushes to her side, projecting a hologram of the video feeds so she can keep watch. The moment she hears a bang on the door and Lance’s low, urgent voice demanding to be let in, she pushes her hand against the keypad. The door swipes open and she drops down to hold out a hand to him. 

On second thought, make that two hands.

Lance grabs on, and she flexes her arms until her elbows lock and complain. He pulls and she heaves; his legs scramble for purchase against the ship’s smoothly sloping side. 

It's working. He moves up a few painful inches, managing to hook one hand in the bottom of doorway to pull himself up faster. 

Pidge holds back a premature yelp of joy long enough for it to turn to one of horror. 

Lance yells, and his weight dips down as if he's being tugged. 

And that he is. 

A rotter has its grip on his ankle, pulling him toward what remains of a mouth. He flails and kicks to get away, and his hand falls out of Pidge’s. He stays up with the one hand he's got anchored on the floor of the ship. But his fingertips have gone white, and a second walker has joined the struggle to pull him down. He tries to grab hold of her hand again, but he's moving around too much for her to get a grip. He's swinging and kicking for all he's worth, but they feel no pain. Only hunger. 

He won't make it. 

“We gotta go!” Hunk yells from somewhere inside. 

She whips around to see Hunk running between two open panels of wires. Rover abandons her side to go help with whatever crisis Hunk is dealing with now.

Her eyes catch on the window. It's about to give, any second now. 

Trying to gulp, but unable to with such a dry mouth, she turns back to Lance. 

There's no one else. She has to do something. 

She makes a fist to stiffen a katar, but before she even reaches out with it, she knows it's no use. They're too far away. 

Well then. 

She pulls her blaster out, takes one steadying breath, aims at an angle most likely to miss Lance, and fires. 

She grazes the one with the tightest hold on Lance, startling it enough into letting go briefly. Lance immediately latches onto the opportunity, swinging up with one knee to climb into the ship. 

The rotter’s recovery time is impressive though. It makes sense, doesn’t it? Physics pushes it backward, and willpower springs it right back up. 

It reaches a claw toward Lance’s dangling foot, but before it can grab on, Pidge fires again. This time, her arms are steady, and the laser beam connects with its elbow. It howls in rage as its claw dangles uselessly, and Lance finally climbs all the way in. 

He's out of breath—sitting cross-legged on the floor, panting, wholly unembarrassed. He doesn't even glance up when Pidge slams her hand into the keypad to close the door behind him. 

“Come on,” she mutters to him. Her eyes are on Hunk as he slathers some sort of sealant onto the weakening window. They don't have time to catch their breaths. 

Lance nods, takes another moment to force his breathing to stabilize, and gets to his feet, heading toward the flight controls. 

The three of them don't sit down again until after the ship is in the air, firmly on the trajectory for Doryon. 

The clawing hands of death left behind, the three allow silence to reign for a while. 

Lance is the first to break it. 

“I thought I was going to die back there. I _should_ have died back there.” 

Hunk takes in a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “I’d been losing hope for a while now.”

Lance looks at him. “You never said.” 

“Neither did you.”

They both turn to Pidge. She averts her eyes. Rover hovers silently behind her.

“I didn't think we had much time left living off an unforgiving, infested land,” Hunk says. “We’re out of there because of you.”

Lance speaks up again. “You didn't have to save me just now. When the rotters were making grabby hands at me. I'd done my bit; the ship was free.”

“But you did,” adds Hunk. 

She still avoids their gaze. She didn't do it out of heroism, or even compassion. She merely acted on instinct. And instinct doesn't deserve gratitude. 

“We're going to help you, Pidge,” says Lance. 

She looks up at that. 

“We have to,” Hunk agrees. “We’ll help you get where you need to go before we go home. Where was it you were headed?”

“Sentrax.” The name rolls off her tongue automatically, bringing her voice back with it. “Look, I helped you get on the ship, and you helped me get it off the ground. Why do you want to keep involving yourselves?”

“You saved our lives,” Lance replies. “That's worth a lot more than fixing a ship. We owe you. Besides,” he smiles, “we make a good team.” 

A beat, then she returns the smile, albeit tentatively. 

No one is getting to Sentrax without information. If she can’t find some on Doryon…. 

Best not think that far ahead until she needs to.

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr: [writing blog](https://sleapywolfwrites.tumblr.com/) | [VLD sideblog](https://sir-klancelot.tumblr.com/)  
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/sleapygazelle)


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